


this river of blood congeals

by deadeels



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bottom Steve Rogers, Depression, Dirty Talk, M/M, Mild Feminization, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers-centric, Up all night to get Bucky (Marvel), but also respecting his boundaries, intercrural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 22:43:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16458431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadeels/pseuds/deadeels
Summary: For one wild, desperate moment he’s convinced that Bucky will be there if he turns around, the Bucky from before everything. Hair slicked back and cocky smile fixed on his face.Why so blue, baby?He’d say, and hold out his arms, and Steve would fall into them like he belongs there.Steve's got a ghost on his hands.





	this river of blood congeals

Steve wakes up cold.

It’s not the room itself, he knows, because the thermostat is set to a pretty solid 75 most days, and besides that his body generates much more heat than it did before the serum. It isn’t his the last vestiges of a dream about being in the ice, either, though that’s not unfamiliar. Instead it’s like wind whipping across his face, snow blowing into his eyes, staining his cheeks red and making him blink. The kind of cold you feel while hanging out of a moving train high up in the mountains.

Nausea rises up as its companion and he tamps it down, ignores the bile collecting in the back of his throat and sits up wearily. Besides the uncomfortable cold and feeling of sickness, something else in the room feels subtly _off,_  like when your cup is an inch to the left of where you set it down. He rests against the headboard as light slowly filters in through the blinds in his room, searching, trying to find the source of the discomfort. His shield rests against the doorframe, where he left it last night—his uniform a heap on the floor, shed after a 36 hour-op that left him unable to do much more than collapse on his bed once he finally got home. He used to have trouble getting to sleep, back when he first woke up, couldn’t stop thinking about all that he’d missed, all that he’d _lost._  Now he finds he can barely keep steady on his feet when he’s not in the fight.

Similarly, though he does miss the Commandos and _Peggy_ with everything he has, his two thought processes these days are ‘ _complete the mission’_  and ‘ _I hope Bucky’s okay, I hope he’s eaten, I hope he’s not injured’_ , a loop running in his head from the moment he wakes up until he falls, blessedly, asleep.

Steve’s survey of the room yields almost no results; there’s a glass of water on his nightstand that he doesn’t remember putting there, but that isn’t unusual. The moments between the end of a long op and when he finally falls asleep are usually blurry at best, muddled from exhaustion. His sweater is draped over the back of the armchair that sits by the window, and the blinds are still drawn, only letting in the little bit of light that peeks between them. Everything, for all intents and purposes, looks as it should. He wonders if his mind is finally going—if it is, he’s not surprised.

He sits there until his phone rings. “ _Suit up, Cap, there’s a telekinetic teenager on the loose._ ”

-

The next week the feeling is back, in his kitchen this time. He’s fresh out of an op again, and though this one was much less taxing his hands still shake as he fills his glass with water from the tap; he still aches to go to sleep for the next 14 hours, more if he can swing it. He can’t, though, not until he finishes his debrief for Coulson, and god _damn._

The hairs at the back of Steve’s neck raise as he leans over the sink, as if there’s someone standing behind him. For one wild, desperate moment he’s convinced that Bucky will be there if he turns around, the Bucky from before the ice, before the war, before everything. Hair slicked back and cocky smile fixed on his face. _Why so blue, baby?_ He’d say, and hold out his arms, and Steve would fall into them like he belongs there.

He squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t turn around, because if he does and there’s no one there—or worse, there _is_ —he thinks he might shatter like some of the men did back in the war. He thinks he might go crazy.

Steve swallows the water down shakily, has to force himself not to grasp the glass too tight or _it_ will shatter, wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. Breathes deep, and waits for the feeling to pass.

It feels like hours he stands there, waiting for the prickling at the back of his neck to subside. When it does, gradually petering off until he’s absolutely sure there’s no one else in the room with him, he lets out a gust of air, breathes in deep and turns around.

There’s no one there if there ever was, just his dark kitchen with its too-modern appliances and dining table he never uses. The disappointment is almost suffocating.

-

The feeling occurs frequently in the next month, only ever when Steve is alone and too tired to try and find the cause. A glass out of place, a book left on the table that he’s sure he never picked up, a dwindling supply of milk when he hasn’t been around to drink any. He puts it down to exhaustion until one morning when he wakes up to the sunlight spilling full-on across his face through the window.

Steve hasn’t opened the blinds in his room since he’s moved in. He spends all his time away; if he’s in his room, he’s asleep, and he doesn’t like the streetlights. There is no possible way that they could be open unless someone else had opened them. He texts Sam.

**_Sent 12:16 PM:_ **

_Hey did you come by this morning?_

**_Received 12:17 PM:_ **

_Nah man I’m back in DC. Something wrong?_

Steve looks at the window. Looks back at his phone.

**_Sent 12:20 PM:_ **

_Everything’s fine._

He gets up and draws the blinds, the sight of them open not sitting well with him, and goes out into the living room. On the coffee table sits a glass of orange juice, half drunk. Steve closes his eyes hard, opens them again.

It’s still there.

Steve doesn’t even _have_ orange juice, hadn’t been able to afford it before the war and had never gotten into the habit of buying it now. The glass is from his kitchen, though, and he picks it up gingerly, as if it’s liable to vanish at any second.

At a glance, the room reveals nothing as always; his books are still on the bookshelf, the pillows on the couch are in place and the little television Tony had scoffed at upon seeing—the only valuable in the room save for the pictures on the mantle—hasn’t been stolen or visibly tampered with. Steve puts the glass down and bends to sweep his hand under the couch for bugs, (not that he ever has important SHIELD-related conversations here, anyway) does the same to the shelves of the bookcase, under the coffee table and around the window panes.

The feeling of being watched comes back stronger than it’s ever been as soon as he turns away from the window and picks up the glass to take it to the kitchen. Steve frowns and looks around again even though it’s irrational—he lives on the fifth floor and the fire escape is in the kitchen, there’s no way in hell someone could possibly be watching him—and isn’t surprised to see an unfettered view of Brooklyn through his living room windows, cooking under the midday sun.

This isn’t—Steve can’t just blame exhaustion, anymore, not now that there’s solid physical evidence that someone’s been here. _Someone_ , as if it wasn’t Bucky, as if Bucky wasn’t the only one who’d break into his house and drink juice and try to passive-aggressively wake Steve up. It’s ridiculous.

He’s at a loss, an impasse, unwilling to call Sam or Natasha and cause alarm but unable to go on as if nothing has happened. If Bucky does remember, at least enough to figure out where Steve lives and refrain from killing him, he desperately wants to take it as a good sign. He isn’t sure how the world will react to the Winter Soldier, much less two people he almost killed.

Steve resolves to let Bucky do as he pleases. He starts ignoring the little things, treating Bucky like a startled animal that just needs to be convinced its safe enough to show itself. It feels wrong, not tracking Bucky down and begging him to come home feels _wrong,_  but Steve feels like he owes him this, at least. This last piece of autonomy that hasn’t been stripped from him.

More signs that it’s Bucky and not some extreme stalker with unfortunate timing appears as long brown hairs on his couch, the scuff of a boot print in the kitchen, a picture of them stolen from the Smithsonian left out on the kitchen counter. This calms the part of Steve that fears, desperately, that Bucky will grow bored of observing him and decide to leave altogether. He wouldn’t be so obvious unless he was doing it on purpose, as some sort of sign, some complicated form of communication for only Steve to try and decipher.

Or maybe he’s reading too much into it.

Either way, it gives Steve a little more of an ultimatum to take care of himself. If Bucky’s watching he wants to communicate as much stability as he possibly can, regardless of whether or not it’s the truth. He leaves the blinds open, wakes up early as if he didn’t have multiple hours’ worth of nightmares and goes on a run that’s long enough to make feasible sense for his enhanced metabolism but not so long it seems like suicide. Steve eats the recommended amount, as per Bruce’s orders, and taps out of reports after a few hours to avoid staying up into the dead of night. It is absolutely ridiculous.

The idea of Bucky watching when he very well may not be changes Steve’s habits completely and totally, and he finds himself feeling much better. He can’t help but wonder what will happen should Bucky actually decide to show himself.

-

He doesn’t. SHIELD becomes more coordinated as the months pass and Steve goes back to multiple ops a week with hardly a break in between flying out and writing debriefs. As the signs of Bucky’s presence dwindle back down to nothing he loses the energy to keep up his self-care routine devised in case Bucky was watching, and he ends up feeling more exhausted than before the whole ‘living with a ghost’ thing really started.

He goes out on more stealth missions, now, his only identifying factor being the shield as the new suit Tony’s been working on isn’t ready, and Steve finds them preferable to those where he’s made to be Captain America. If they’re a bit dirtier, well. It’s a decent way to take out his frustration, is all.

This one was rough—the ops with kids always get to Steve like nothing else does, and he finds himself trudging off the ‘jet with barely-concealed fatigue when they finally make it back.

“Hey.” Natasha’s standing at the bottom of the quinjet’s ramp, eyeing Steve with an indecipherable expression as the STRIKE team filters out in front of them. He smiles, hopes it doesn’t look as tired as it feels.

“Hey,” he replies, and tries to move past her. He needs a shower, he needs to _sleep,_  he just wants to go home and pretend for two seconds that he’s a normal man with a normal life lest he collapse under the pressure.

She moves to intercept him so he can’t get past, and he _hates_ how she knows him so well as to be confident he won’t just shove her aside. “Still thinking about Barnes?” She phrases it like it’s a question, not a given.

Steve stops. The shield is heavy on his back like it’s never been. He wants to go to sleep.

“What do you think?”

He knows he hasn’t been hiding his fucking, _angst_ as well as he should be lately. They all have problems, most of them exponentially greater than his own. Natasha noticing was inevitable, but he can’t afford to have the rest of them catch on, too.

Natasha’s careful blankness slips, just a little, and her expression softens. She reaches out to him, telegraphing her movements, and places a hand on his shoulder. If not quite friendly, still a show of support from warrior to warrior.

“Hydra doesn’t control him anymore. That doesn’t seem like much when he’s not around, but it is something.” She takes her hand back, and Steve is struck by an intense feeling of gratitude for her, for _Nat,_  because she’s never been one to offer platitudes.  

He nods wordlessly, meeting her eyes, trying to convey that gratitude as best he can without opening his mouth. He thinks she gets it.

-

Steve is in the same room as the blast when it hits. It throws him back and his head cracks against one of the metal desks, reverberating through every part of his brain, jiggling grey matter. He feels parts of the suit’s arms burn away and blisters rise up on the surface of his skin, staying within to the epidermis. It’ll itch and burn like hell but at least it won’t turn black and gray. He hates that.

Steve manages to get himself up, doesn’t check to see how much blood there is definitely on the back of his head because he doesn’t really want to know.

He’d been the only one sent to investigate the servers, so there was no one else in the room with him when it went off, a fact he is endlessly grateful of when he has to drag himself out—his augmented strength can barely hold himself, and he knows another person would’ve been nigh impossible. His comm is dead, probably damaged in the with the heat, so he can’t get ahold of Natasha to at least let her know he’s alive. She won’t like it.

Steve manages his way out of the hall, trying to run but failing horribly. He spares a glance at his legs—his pants are ripped and bloodied, but they look fine; no explanation for why he feels as though he’s trying to run through molasses.

He trips, stumbles and falls, feels the heat on the back of his neck like a gargantuan beast breathing on him. Steve hisses when his scraped knees hit the concrete floor. He’s certainly acquainted with what near-death feels like. He knows his body’s reaction to it down to exactly how much adrenaline is released when Steve thinks he’s really gonna bite it this time. It seemed like too abstract a concept to begin to properly _fear_ , though, until now. Now, he’s more scared than he’s ever been in his whole life, with this big beast of a fire breathing down his neck and Bucky’s ghost probably still watching his every move. He feels like a child again, sickly and afraid. He wants to live. He really fucking wants to live.

Steve pushes himself up and runs. It _hurts,_  but the adrenaline helps, and soon he’s skidding around a corner and running straight into Sam.

“Cap!” He shouts, right there, and Steve appreciates him fiercely.

“Bomb.. in the server room.” Speech is difficult. Sam doesn’t seem to notice. They take a left, run together.

“The—that’s where you were!” Sam huffs out. Steve can tell he wants to do a full checkup, right here right now, but there isn’t time.

“Yeah,” Steve says, feeling off balance again. The adrenaline is wearing off and he doesn’t think he has any more. “It was.. a bust. ‘F anything was there ‘fore, it was all cleared out,” Steve slurs.

“So why plant a bomb, then?” Steve can’t manage more than a shrug this time as they burst out into the open air. Natasha is there with the ‘jet, waiting in the expansive, empty lot the base is in. He makes it mostly up the ramp before his vision gets real blurry and he has to stop.

“Steve?” He hears Natasha say.

“Holy shit, Steve, that is a nasty head wound—”

“There’s always a lot more blood than there should be, he’s probably fine—”

“You know I’d never question your judgement, Nat, but does he look fine to you?”

Steve opens his eyes. He doesn’t remember closing them. “‘M fine,” he says, and winces at how unconvincing it sounds. Somehow he’s made it from the ramp of the ‘jet all the way to one of the seats, with Sam sitting next to him prodding gently at the wound at the back of his head. They’re flying, which means they’re finally going home, and Steve sighs a breath of relief.

Maybe Bucky will be there.

-

Steve isn’t conscious for most of the flight home, but by the time they land at Stark tower he feels moderately better. The wound on the back of his head has stopped bleeding and he’s almost sure he can’t get concussions anymore, so Bruce lets him off with promises to rest and drink a lot of water.

He doesn’t have the energy to make the trek back to his apartment so he stays on his floor of the Tower for the night. The bed is too soft, but his body is too exhausted to fight the difference.

Sleep folds in on him relatively quickly after that, and he only wakes up to vomit up bile once (a result of the head wound, Bruce said it might happen. His body thinks he has a concussion even though he’s fine—reminds him too much of having all those autoimmune disorders back when he was small.)

The next time he wakes the clock on his bedside table reads 0400 and it’s incredibly dark outside. The mattress depresses and suddenly there’s a warmth clinging to his back. A heavy arm comes to wrap around his middle.

Steve sighs. His dreams get like this, sometimes, invade the real world a little. It can be nice, or horrible. He hopes it’s nice this time.

He feels warm lips press up against the back of his neck, an even warmer thumb coming up to rub gently at his throat. A nip right at the junction of his jaw. A rumble when he presses himself back, feels a clothed cock rubbing against him right where he needs. Steve sighs.

“Baby,” Bucky whispers, right up close next to his ear. His breath is wet and hot and good. Steve lets out an embarrassing, breathy noise in response, trying his damnedest not to whine outright like a dame in a blue movie. The hand over his throat moves between them to shove his pants down and bare his ass. A warm finger rubs dry over his hole and this time he _does_ whine, deep in his throat. The answering moan he gets in response is worth it.

He feels more movement behind him, then Bucky’s cock is nestled up between his cheeks, right where it belongs. The kisses on Steve’s neck are fiercer now, wetter, and his own dick strains against his sweats. He pushes them down and wraps his hand around it, squeezing. It’s good, real good.

He can feel Bucky’s dick wet up where it’s rubbing against him all sweet, easing the way for him to slide between Steve’s cheeks and right up against his hole. It’s intoxicating. Steve wants to get not-concussions every day for the rest of his life if these are the kinda dreams he’s gonna be having.

“You still my sweetheart?” Bucky rumbles. He’s close, only starts with the chatter when he’s getting real close, and this is Steve’s favorite part. “You still all mine?”

Steve nods frantically. “Yeah, Buck, you know it. Slide up in me and see, you’ll know, you’ll feel there ain’t been anyone but you, I swear.” Usually when Steve wants something in one of these dreams to happen he gets it real fast, but this time Bucky holds on out on him.

“You ain’t been sluttin’ around on me?”

“ _No_ , Buck, promise—”

“Yeah that’s right, Stevie,” he says, and comes hard, marking Steve up. Bucky growls right into Steve’s throat, the vibrations make his hips stutter where he’s fucking up into his hand and he comes, loudly and violently, shaking through it. Bucky holds him through it.

He falls asleep right after, healing factor still ruling most of his body’s major functions and unable to keep up with the strenuous activity. Steve’s glad it happens before the dream goes so he has the privilege of falling asleep with a hard, unyielding arm wrapped securely around his middle.

-

The next morning, Steve feels at once bereft and much better than he did a few hours prior. His head no longer throbs and the nausea is gone. He reaches behind himself and rubs a few fingers across his ass, checking.

There’s nothing, as always, except for the mess in his sweats.

He drags himself out of bed and into a hot shower. Steve takes himself in hand and squeezes once, twice, thinking about the way Bucky says ‘ _baby’_ , and comes almost instantly. Muscles relaxed from the combination of his orgasm and the hot water and head clear from the steam, he heads down to the common room.

Nat is the only one there, Sam probably having gone back to D.C. to go to his actual job. Steve feels a twinge of guilt at continually bringing him on potentially lethal missions when he already has a life that includes people who rely on him.

“Feel any better?” Nat asks. There’s a coffee mug in her outstretched hand, and Steve takes it gratefully. “You lost a lot of blood yesterday.”

“Eh,” Steve shrugs. “Head wounds.” Natasha looks like she wants to laugh but doesn’t. “Do we know who planted the bomb?” She shakes her head, looking annoyed.

“Our best guess is that it was some rogue HYDRA agent that didn’t want their identity leaked. They probably didn’t even know the servers had already been wiped.” To think, Steve’s survived to be almost 90 years old and he almost got taken out by some inconsequential HYDRA grunt who wasn’t even high up enough on the food chain to know whether or not what he was trying to hide was still around.

Natasha sets her own mug down with a sharp _clink_ and looks Steve right in the eye.

“We have a lead on Barnes.”

Steve, unprepared for the subject change, tries not let himself get too overworked. Even if they’ve found him doesn’t mean he _wanted_ to be found. He’d stopped leaving Steve signs for a reason.

“Oh?” He asks, feigning neutrality. Natasha raises her eyebrow. He doesn’t know why he tried.

“He’s in New York. He was prowling around SHIELD headquarters, one of the newer agents saw him.” She steps closer. “JARVIS noticed an anomaly in one of the cameras near your floor last night, Steve.” He frowns.

“I’m not sure what you’re implying—”

“Are you harboring him?” She doesn’t sound angry, maybe a bit disappointed, but Steve is irritated now.

“No, Nat. I—he was leaving things, in my apartment, signs that he’d been there, but he stopped months ago. I haven’t seen—” Steves stops. He didn’t.. _see_ Bucky, exactly, but he sure felt him. His face flushes. She raises her eyebrows, _again_ , both this time.

“He visited you.” It’s not a question, and Steve feels his face grow even hotter, but at least she sounds more amused than disappointed now. “I suppose that narrows down what his target is.”

Steve shrugs. It could’ve been a one-off. He shudders at the sense memory of Bucky, rubbing his thumb over the sensitive spots on Steve’s throat. He resists the urge to bring a hand up and touch there himself.

“I don’t want to hunt him down,” Steve says. “Fury’s not above ground yet and I don’t want to risk our chances with the U.N. finding out he was the Winter Soldier without backup.” Natasha nods.  
  
“We wait for him, then. Evasiveness was always too much his strong suit.” Steve wishes he couldn’t agree.

-

The wait turns out to be much shorter than expected. A week after the explosion and a few days after Steve returns home to his apartment in Brooklyn he returns home from the store to find everything in his house exactly as it should be, except Bucky is sitting on his couch flipping through a copy of _Frankenstein._  It was one of Steve’s favorites before the war, and it helped a little to know that the only thing that had changed about it in the last seventy years was a reduction of the weird, incestuous subtext.

“Hey,” Steve says, setting the groceries on the counter as if it’s any other day. All at once he’s petrified of scaring Bucky off.

“Hey,” Bucky unfolds himself from the couch and saunters up to him. He looks good, really, much better than he did on the Helicarrier. His hair is still long but cleaner now, doesn’t hang in a stringy curtain around his face but rather is tied up in a thick bun, strands flying free and falling over his forehead. He’s got a bit of scruff, too, but it suits him, and his clothes are clean. Steve feels his heart pulse in his chest when Bucky steps in close. He smells like Steve’s soap.

“Missed you,” Steve says, and swallows. He pulls a head of lettuce out of the bag and holds it awkwardly between them. Bucky smirks.

“Saw you the other night, didn’t I?”

Steve glares. “I didn’t see shit.”

Bucky plucks the head of lettuce out of his hand and sets it on the counter, then grabs his hips and pulls him forward with unrelenting force. Steve absolutely does not yelp.

He goes in for a hard kiss, clutching at Steve hard enough to leave bruises. He wants this, _god_ does he want this now that he’s fully awake to remember it, but it doesn’t feel right without knowing Bucky’s safe first. He gets his hands up to Bucky’s chest and gently pushes until they’re disconnected, foreheads still pressed together but lips separated enough that Steve can talk.

“Hey,” he says again. “You okay?” Bucky’s eyes darken.

“I’m gettin’ there.”  
  
Steve swallows thickly. “Need some help?” Bucky nods, rubbing their foreheads together.

“No immediate danger, right?” He shakes his head this time. “Okay,” Steve says, soft, and kisses him.

Bucky clings to Steve’s hips and draws them towards the bedroom, licking wet and heavy into Steve’s mouth.

“Didn’t get to do this the other night,” he says, breathless. Steve pulls away with a wet noise.

“And whose fault was that?” He asks, trying to keep the laughter out of his voice. This guy.

“I dunno, Stevie, maybe that cute little ass was just too much of a distraction for me,” Bucky teases, and lets them fall back onto the bed. Steve missed this, he really—he fucking missed this.

“I really missed this,” he says, turning in Bucky’s arms so he’s on his belly and Bucky’s dick is pressed snug against his ass, draped over his back. Hand resting at his throat. “You—leavin’ those things for me to see, makin’ me think I was going crazy,” he pressed back and breathes heavy out his nose. “Watchin’ me all the time, I know you were. Did you see when I put on my little shows for you? Huh, Buck?” Bucky’s growl says he did. “Didja watch when I fucked myself on my fingers, huh? Did you wish you were in here with me with your fat cock—”

Bucky slaps him on the ass, hard. “You’re such a goddamn slut for it, Stevie, Jesus _Christ,_ ‘course I watched you, of course I fuckin’ did.” Steve wants to ask why he never came in from the cold, why he watched Steve break all the way apart in the good _and_ the bad way and never did a damn thing—but that wouldn’t be fair. Bucky needed his space and he got it, and now he’s here and there’s no time like the present.

Bucky rifles through the side table because of course he knows right where Steve keeps the lube, if he really has been watching, and pulls Steve’s pants down at the same time. “You remember what I said?” Steve asks. “‘Bout you being the only one inside me?”

“Yeah, baby, I remember.” Satisfied, Steve allows Bucky to press two fingers into him right out of the gate, just verging on the edge off too much; but Bucky’s claim that Steve is a slut is terribly accurate, and he pushes up into it all the same. Bucky reaches around with his metal hand and rubs his thumb along Steve’s nipple. “You still like it when I play with your tits, honey?” Bucky asks even as Steve grunts and arches into it, a smirk in his voice. As if that’s something that just _goes away._

Bucky sits back on his haunches, perched atop Steve’s thighs, and Steve can hear him undoing his belt. The noise strikes a visceral chord in him, evokes a sense memory of feeling Brooklyn heat and the smell of smoke when Bucky came home all pissed off and needing to push him around and then get all sweet after. Steve aches for it.

When Bucky slides home he can’t let out more than a pathetic little ‘ _oh_ ’ at the feeling. _Ain’t nothing better than having your guy inside you,_ Steve thinks wildly.

“You like this dick, baby?” Bucky spouts filth into his ear and rides Steve hard, clutching at his sides, his thighs, leaving marks. Steve is past words, unable to do much more than grunt helplessly everytime Bucky finds his prostate with unerring accuracy. “Yeah, you do. Listen to yourself, Stevie. Like a bitch in heat, every fuckin’ time. Should just keep you like this, all stretched open and ready and begging. Bet you’d like it, huh? Take some of that weight off your shoulders. You want that, Stevie? You wanna be a nice home for my cock?”

Steve comes with a loud, truncated moan. Bucky thrusts into his pliant body a few more times before coming, too, fucking Steve through it, then pulling out slow and letting Steve feel where it’s leaking outta him.

Steve tries desperately to stay awake but can’t quite manage it in the interim between Bucky leaving bed and returning to lovingly wipe down Steve’s ass with a wet cloth. He eases back into wakefulness when Bucky climbs in behind him and wraps an arm around his chest, mimicking their position from only a week before.

“Gonna stay, Buck?” Steve asks, too sated to be worried about sounding too selfish. He thinks Bucky won’t mind.

“Yeah, Stevie,” he says. “I can try.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr!](https://vrsnufffilm.tumblr.com/)


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